Wastewater-based epidemiology as a surveillance tool to assess human consumption of psychotropic substances: Alcohol, nicotine and caffeine as case studies

Abstract Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is used as a surveillance tool to provide data on public health, drug use, exposure to chemicals and lifestyle habits. This approach can be used to monitor the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, such as reducing alcohol consumption and reducing the use of tobacco. In addition, it can be applied to monitor total caffeine consumption and assess levels according to the recommended daily safety limit as suggested by the European Food Safety Authority. The purpose of this review was to summarize and discuss analytical protocols for the determination of alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine WBE biomarkers in wastewater. The WBE requirements for these biomarkers were thoroughly investigated. Furthermore, back-calculated levels of alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine in the population were reviewed. Finally, challenges were identified, and future directions were proposed to fill knowledge gaps and improve the quality of information obtained from the WBE approach.Nikolaos Rousis: This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska–Curie Grant Agreement No. 896141. Richard Bade is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Award (project number DE220100381), funded by the Australian Government. Emma Gracia-Lor: This work has been supported by the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid - Spain) under the Multiannual Agreement with Complutense University in the line Program to Stimulate Research for Young Doctors in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Research and Technological Innovation), project number PR65/19–22432, and also by the Government Delegation for the National Drugs Plan (Ministry of Health, Spain), with funds from the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Mechanism of the European Union - NextGenerationEU, project number EXP2022/008817. The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the funding agencies